Green Children of Woolpit 2: The Mysterious Source X January 23, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
Any historical problem is based on sources and with the mystery of the Green Children of Woolpit there are three sources to be reckoned with. There is William of Newburgh, there is Ralph Coggeshall and there is, Beach is convinced, Document X, a now lost work that both writers drew upon. However, before getting to the brooding presence of X let’s talk about known quantities, William and Ralph.
William, first of all, likely died in or just after 1198 when his detailed chronicle of English history gives out: the episode on the green children was written probably 1196-1198. William was based, as his name suggests, in North Yorkshire and was resident at an Augustinian priory at Newburgh where, towards the end of his life, he wrote an incomplete work Historia Rerum Anglicarum. If William was to be summed up with one word it would be ‘historian’: he, indeed, could stand with Bede as one of the two patrons of English historiography in the Middle Ages (while being far less influential than Bede). Both are interested in testimony and sources and though they sometimes show signs of that niggling medieval habit of inventing credible things where there are gaps, they lived by values that any modern historian would recognise.
Ralph was based, instead, at Coggeshall monastery in Essex where he seems to have become abbot in 1207. He died c. 1225. His work, the only piece of writing certainly by him, was the Chronicon Anglicanum and the episode about the green children was probably written in or prior to 1205. Ralph was a historian, like William, but he lacked William’s lofty style. If Beach was forced to pick one word for Ralph it would be ‘commentator’ or ‘annalist’. His Latin is less baroque than William’s and he is more straightforward. In modern terms Ralph was also more ‘credulous’ than William (though this doesn’t seem much of an insult in a medieval context). William was worried by the Green Children episode, Ralph was fascinated by it.
On paper Ralph was the best positioned to write about the greenies. Coggeshall is relatively close to Woolpit (forty miles) and Ralph says that he knew the family of Sir Richard de Calne (where the children found refuge) and that he had heard members of the household and family tell the story of the green children (sicut ab eodem milite et eius familia frequenter audivimus). William was the wrong side of the country and reports simply that the event ‘was spoken of by many people’, which sounds generic and could have meant, say, a written source and a merchant who slept over at Newburgh and entertained the monks with a tall tale he’d heard in a London brothel. Medieval appeals to witnesses are more about volume than quality…
According to William the green children arrived in the reign of Stephen (ended 1154). Even if he is wrong on this point then Ralph’s claim that the green girl had recently been reported alive means that we are dealing with the second half of the twelfth century or only shortly before the second half. Could we even just say that the green kids arrived c. 1150 or c.c. 1150 and have done with it? (There is a fifty year gap between event and testimony: that is actually quite a long time…: if you wanted to take the axe to the ‘facts’ in the story it might just be possible).
What is fascinating about the two accounts of the green children is how similar they are. It is true that the Latin is different, with even ‘obvious’ words being expressed in different ways by the two writers. However, both crucially describe the events of the green children in the same order and often with strikingly similar details. Here, at the head of the post, Beach has taken, one small screen capture from JC’s summary of part of the narrative of the two authors (William left, Ralph right). It gives an excellent idea of the similarity of their accounts. There are certain small differences here. For example, William tells us that the children were caught by the harvesters: was he ‘filling in’? But the overall common sequence is clear. How do we explain the similarities?
There are four explanations that jump to mind. (i) Ralph copied from William; (ii) William copied from Ralph; (iii) there was a stable oral story that both writers drew on; (iv) there was a third source that both used. Beach would reject (iii) out of hand. Oral sources are simply not this stable unless in a codified tradition, e.g. epic poetry transmitted by hexameter. (i) and (ii) are more tempting. However, both William and Ralph include extra details about the children. Apart from certain unimportant distinctions these follow a pattern. William puts more historical sounding material into the story and Ralph puts more folkloric information into the story. Now it is possible, of course, that there were multiple sources. But the most economic answer is that there was a common written source and that William edited out the more incredible points of the narrative (e.g. wanderings through a subterranean world) and that Ralph edited out the more historical information (the famous St Martin’s Land). If this is correct then source X is the sum of Ralph and William plus other now forgotten details, which both writers refused.
There are two problems with the theory of the existence of X. First, there is the almost total lack of Latin parallels between the two authors. The only explanation Beach would have here is that William the more ‘accomplished’ writer, recast the Latin that was given to him (cf. JC 38). Careful reading and rereading by an accomplished medieval Latinist might turn up some surprising echoes, or at least would if the X theory stands up. (JC (38) notes that in one other instance Ralph and William share a now lost source about Richard I’s adventures after the Crusades. It would be interesting to look carefully, too, at those passages.) A second problem is that William disagrees with Ralph on one curious point, the chronology of death of the boy. Here Beach wonders whether either William or Ralph didn’t misread X and then rather than cancel out two or three lines, over an ‘unimportant detail’, they just rode with this small ‘alteration’. Many modern historians would do something similar rather than go back to the British Library to, say, check a page number: shame on them but we are all human….
Let’s assume that the theory offered here is right and that x did exist. Who wrote it and where? It is likely that the document was put together in a religious house or by a clergyman, as a record of some bizarre event. Perhaps Coggeshall is a reasonable candidate, particularly given the connections with the family of Richard? Perhaps Ralph had previously written a summary of the greenies that later served as a memorandum for his Chronicon? This is all far beyond proof, of course, but with the green children speculation is oxygen. It could have been written a year or a generation before William got his mits on it, so even if we accept X’s existence we have no proof that the source was substantially more trustworthy.
Any other thoughts on the existence (or otherwise) of X? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
